Elijah's Chariot (The Forgotten Children Book 1) (9 page)

Sean
and his father finally found a set of keys plugged into the ignition of the
thirteenth car. Both of them had been quite surprised to find almost twenty
cars, most of them taxis, parked out in front of the hotel, completely
unattended, most not even locked. They were even more surprised to have found
keys. Kevin opened the door of the large, shiny black sedan and started the
engine without any trouble. 

The
sky was just beginning to lighten as Sean put his suitcase in the back seat.
There had been no activity in the streets and still no sounds from any of the
other hotel occupants or staff. They assumed that they were the last ones left
in the building. They’d locked up their room after making a few last-minute
sweeps to see if they’d left any belongings, then dropped the keys off at the
front desk before walking out the glass front doors. 

The
large, black vinyl seat was cold, but well-cushioned. Kevin pulled his seatbelt
into place and gripped the steering wheel, checking the gas tank. Sean sat
expectantly next to him. Despite the early hour, his eyes were open wide and he
was leaning forward in his seat. 

“I
haven’t taught you how to drive before, have I?” Kevin asked.

“Not
yet.”

“Well,
we can probably just go over a few basics. Um, once you’ve turned on the car
you might have to give it a little gas to get it started, especially on cold
mornings – then, you can just pull it into drive right here.” 

“I
know all that, Dad. I just need practice on the road.”

“Huh,”
Kevin said, glancing at his son as he eased out of the parking spot. “Have you,
uh, had any road practice yet?”

Sean
didn’t say anything. Despite the boy’s excitement, Kevin had seen his son wince
a couple of times as they were talking. They’d both awoken with pretty painful
headaches. Aspirin with breakfast had helped a little, but they were still
aware of the pressure pounding in their temples. 

“Maybe
we’ll have to get you out on the road sometime – not today,” Kevin said as he
pulled out into the deserted street. 

It
had been a cold night. There was frost on the grass in the field across from
the Cosmos Hotel. The tires rolled smoothly across the chilled asphalt. They
didn’t see any cars or other signs of life as they drove down the multi-lane
boulevards. 

Connors’
directions had been fairly precise, but it was still difficult navigating in a
large, foreign city with unreadable street signs. With Sean holding tightly to
the notes jotted down by his father yesterday evening and cross-referencing
them with a map of Moscow that they had found in the glove box, Kevin drove the
large, black car through quiet intersections, past locked department stores and
abandoned metro stations. 

Once
they got onto the Garden Ring road, they saw a couple of men rummaging through
garbage bins at the edge of a large, outdoor market. The men raised their heads
briefly as they heard the car go by, then went back to their search. 

A
few minutes later, they noticed something ahead in the road. As they got
closer, he could see that it was a person, heavily bundled in a large coat and
boots. He slowed down and drove to the left of the body. As they continued,
they found more bodies on the sidewalks and in the streets – most appeared to
have died of some type of injury, rather than from the mystery plague. 

They
drove up a small rise and Sean pointed out at a large, dark building rising
above the rest of the tenements. “Is that it? One of the seven sisters?”

Kevin
studied the immense building closely as they neared. A delicate spire pierced
the early morning cloud cover. This was set atop a series of blocks of three or
four stories, each one larger than the one above it, until they all rested on a
large, square base that looked to be several streets wide and hundreds of yards
long. Delicately crafted spires matching the tall main one were set at the
corners of each level giving the building a dual quality of both gothic
cathedral and industrial skyscraper. 

Stalin
had ordered these buildings constructed during his thirty year tyrannical rule.
Now, seven of these large, dark temples adorned Moscow’s skyline, all built in
celebration of the new species of Modern Soviet Man:
Homo Sovieticus
.
Most had originally served as government agency buildings, but many had been
converted after the fall of the Soviet Union for private use – apartments,
offices. 

“Yes,
that has to be it,” he said as they continued up the gradually rising street
toward the monolith. 

The
road curved to the left around a high-walled park, then rose quickly past a
metro station marked with the familiar “M” that stood directly across from the
Seven Sisters building. The smaller apartment buildings around the gothic
structure, leaned closely toward its protective walls, hiding in the immense
shadow it cast across the city. 

Kevin
turned right a couple streets later and parked behind a gray car. The street
was narrow, sandwiched between a series of ten-story apartment buildings that
ran parallel with the huge, Stalin edifice. As Kevin and Sean were unloading
their luggage from the back seat, a young man pushing a baby carriage passed
them on the sidewalk. He calmly strolled behind it, occasionally reaching in to
adjust the blankets around the sleeping baby. His eyes passed over them
briefly, but he didn’t otherwise acknowledge their presence as he continued
walking. The Prochazek’s waited, watching him for a few moments before crossing
the street and entering a building with a large “164” on the placard outside. 

The
interior lobby was tiled in polished stone and was lit by several wrought iron
lamps hanging from the ceiling. There was a large stairway, built along the
wall to the left and a single elevator stood directly ahead. While not exactly
fresh, the building smelled much better than they had expected judging from the
plain, stone exterior and trash strewn around the entrance. 

They
waited for the elevator and stepped inside, pressing number nine. Just as the
doors were closing, the front door to the building burst open and a large,
short-haired man in a heavy, black leather coat shot inside, running straight
for them. 

Sean’s
back pressed against the wall behind him and he drew in a quick breath. Kevin
stepped forward quickly, his hand hovering above the elevator’s control panel,
then froze as he watched the large, blond-haired man reach out as the doors
continued to close. 

His
fingers curled into a fist which just barely stopped the doors from closing,
then he inserted his other hand to force them open. Both Kevin and Sean stood
unmoving as the round-faced giant glared at them. Under his coat he wore a
dark-blue exercise outfit and graying sneakers. 

The
front door swung open again and a smaller man, in a black wool coat that
reached his knees, stepped inside. His shiny, black dress shoes clicked
hollowly on the stone tile as he crossed the lobby, his head down and one hand
in his suit pants pocket as he walked. 

An
irritating buzzing noise started from the elevator’s control panel as the tall,
blond man held the door for the latest arrival. The man in the dress shoes was
older and had a thin goatee and slicked-back black hair. He nodded at Kevin as
he stepped inside, then turned quickly on his heel to face the doors as the
blonde brute let them close. 

They
reached the ninth floor and the older man stepped out first and turned to his
right, walking down the short hallway, ignoring the blonde man behind him. The
large man exited the elevator in front of Kevin and Sean and walked down the
hallway as the older man knocked and responded to a question from someone
inside the apartment. 

Kevin
looked at the apartment number scrawled on the slip of paper in his hand,
checked the number above the door in front of him and turned to the left. They
reached the door at the end of the hall and knocked as the two men down at the
opposite end were being let in. The peephole in the door in front of Kevin and
Sean darkened, then they heard a series of locks being turned. 

The
door, covered with thick, black matting, swung inward and they saw Alan Connors
standing in front of them, his face haggard and his eyes darting about
nervously. 

He
ushered them inside quickly without a greeting. The large door swung shut. The
interior side of it was made of thick, polished steel with four or five strong
locks firmly rooted into its edge. Alan deftly slid all of the locks into place
before turning back to Kevin and Sean. 

“So,
you made it okay? Good, that’s good.” He walked a few steps into the center of
the room and stopped, turning around to face them. His hand smoothed back
thinning dark hair as he stood staring at them and their luggage. Kevin and
Sean took the chance to look around the apartment. They were standing in a
large room with tall windows to their left. A couple of desks and some
bookshelves lined the walls, with some couches in the middle. Several computers
were on the desks as well as what looked like radio equipment and multiple
security televisions. There was a small, but well-stocked kitchen to the right
and a hallway leading to a white-tiled bathroom and another door. A set of
metal stairs on the right rose to a second level that was open and overlooked
the large living room. 

A
thin middle-aged man with deep-set lines in his face, wearing charcoal suit
pants and a dirty dress shirt, emerged in the second-story room. He looked to
Connors, then at Kevin and Sean and exhaled loudly. “Hi. I’m Thompson. Ralph
Thompson.”

“Kevin
Prochazek. This is my son, Sean.” He turned again to Connors. “Where are John
and Kimberley?”

Just
as he finished speaking, John Rohrstadt, his large belly stuffed into a tight, crimson
sweater, walked out behind Thompson. He looked like he’d been awake all night
and was now holding a hand to his head. When he saw Kevin, he smiled. 

“Hi,
Dr. Prochazek – you made it! Well, guys,” he said glancing at Connors and
Thompson, “looks like the day’s already taken a turn for the better!”

Kevin
set his suitcase down on the floor and looked at Connors. “What’s going on?”

Connors,
his hand on the back of his neck, turned to look up at Thompson and Rohrstadt
and said, “We found Kimberley this morning…” 

“We’re
estimating that probably as much as half of Moscow has died in the last three
days,” John Rohrstadt said. He was hunched over, sitting on the edge of his
chair, elbows on his knees and hands together in front of his tightly tethered
stomach. The warm pullover he was wearing looked to be three sizes too small. 

“And
probably most of the ones who are left have left for the dacha – country
cottages,” added Thompson. He looked every bit a man employed by the state, from
his delicately pressed but cheap dark slacks and manicured fingernails to his
short, non-descript haircut and clear, waxy skin. He rubbed his eyes as he
spoke. He’d been keeping them closed for the past twenty minutes – he said the
light made his headache worse. 

Kevin
stood, leaning against the marble kitchen countertop, sipping a cup of real
American coffee. The bitter taste filled his throat and chest, warming him. He
was surprised at how much he’d missed it after only a few days away from home. 

“But,
Moscow has – had – over ten million inhabitants. That’s five million people –
how are you estimating that?” Kevin asked. 

“I
spoke with a doctor yesterday when we went out to survey the neighborhood,”
said Thompson, his back to the large windows that looked out on a narrow alley
below. “He’d been driving around to hospitals throughout the city to try to
find out some news – how the illness is spreading, how to treat or prevent it.
Nobody had any answers, but he got a rough poll on how many had died. John,
here, did some extrapolating and came up with the fifty percent figure.” 

“It
seems about right with what we’ve been seeing on the BBC and CNN,” muttered
Connors. He was sitting with his legs crossed on one of the plush couches,
staring out the window. His voice was a steady monotone, the words sliding out
without emphasis or emotion. 

“You
get CNN?” Sean asked. He was sitting on one of the high stools at the counter
next to his father, busily munching on a toasted bagel with cream cheese. 

John
nodded. “Yeah, this place has a pretty great satellite hook-up. But, we were
just getting the color bars for a few hours last night. Our equipment’s working
fine, but they must not be continuously broadcasting right now. It was on
earlier this morning.”

The
five of them remained silent, rolling the last spoken words over and over in
their minds. A deep, resonating techno beat throbbed dully from the direction
of the front door. Sean remembered that it had started shortly after they had
arrived. He assumed it was the two men that they’d ridden up in the elevator
with – there was only one other apartment on this floor and he hadn’t heard or
seen any signs of life there as they’d passed. 

“Dr.
Rohrstadt,” Kevin said, “theories?”

John
peered up at him, rubbing his hands together. He seemed about to say something,
then sat up straight and started pacing the floor back and forth with his eyes
as if searching for a lost contact. 

“The
facts: deaths began sometime between Sunday night and Monday morning. They
typically occur while the victim is asleep. Some report headaches beforehand,
some do not. Autopsies show some hemorrhaging in the brain…”

John
paused. His thumbs rolled over and over each other as his large, round eyes
continued to roam aimlessly back and forth across the hardwood floor. “As far
as we can tell, the first wave of deaths occurred in Russia and the Middle
East. After that, they seem to have spread fairly uniformly, irrespective of
geography. No signs whether or not the disease or condition is communicable or
how it is transmitted in general. All the victims are adults, with no
discernable concentration in…”

“What
do you mean – adults?” Kevin asked. 

“They’re
all adults – no children have died yet as far as we can tell,” replied John,
looking up at Kevin. “Didn’t you see any bodies at the hotel or on the streets
on your way here?”

“Just
a few, but I didn’t, I didn’t really notice…” his voice trailed off as he
looked from John to Connors. 

“But,
I’ve had the headaches too, same as my dad,” Sean said.

“Remember
we don’t know if the headaches are actually a symptom – some have them, some
don’t. I haven’t talked to any other kids, so I don’t know if any of them have
been having headaches either, but I’d say it’s a good possibility,” John
replied.

“Aren’t
you forgetting the big one, John? The primo, grando fact of them all?” Connors
said as he smiled out the window. His chin was resting on his hand as he leaned
into the armrest. “Everyone started dying the day after Jerry hit – ignoring,
of course, the six Russian airmen that died right when the thing landed.” 

“Could
it be some type of radiation that it brought? I think we’d have detected such a
lethal level before it got here,” John queried. 

“Radiation
poisoning has other symptoms, unless it’s some type we’ve never come across
before,” Kevin said. 

“A
virus maybe. Some organism that can survive in space that destroys any life it
comes into contact with?” John said. 

“We
didn’t see any dead cats or dogs. Did you?” Sean asked as he licked cream
cheese off his fingers. Kevin looked down at his son with an unreadable
expression on his face. Sean glanced up at him and stopped licking his
fingers. 

“Not
that we noticed. Of course, we weren’t looking for that kind of thing, but
you’d think that if that many dogs and cats were dying, they’d be everywhere.
There are thousands of stray dogs in Moscow,” said Thompson. 

“Okay,”
John said in mock excitement, beginning to count with his fingers, “we’ve got
radiation, deadly virus or possibly even some kind of, I don’t know, high
frequency sonic boom that only kills humans eighteen and over.”  

“How
could a giant rock generate any sound?” asked Thompson, entirely missing the
sarcasm. 

John
was about to launch into a highly detailed explanation that he was carefully constructing
right on the spot, when Connors switched the television on with the remote. 

Everyone
looked up at the sound of the news correspondent’s voice. Sean saw that it was
an older man, in his late forties. His hair was graying and he didn’t speak as
fast as the British guy who had been doing the reports on the BBC for the past
couple of days. This guy seemed to pause and stumble a little more also,
seemingly unsure of what to say next or how to properly lead into a story. Sean
wondered if the regular newscaster had left town, or if he was just gone like
so many others.

They
had all forgotten Thompson’s last question, their tired minds and aching heads
totally enraptured by the calming voice coming out at them from across the
miles. Many of the video clips were the same ones that had been broadcast for
the past couple of days. Sean was beginning to recognize some of the people as
they crowded around ambulances and loved ones. 

“We
received a report this morning on the status of the fire on Manhattan Island –
it continues to rage out of control as the understaffed fire departments have
been unable to gain any footing. Traffic out of the city had been at a
standstill for the three hours leading up to the sending of this communication
and many motorists have reportedly abandoned their vehicles.”

The
gray-haired man shuffled through several loose papers in front of him, before
choosing one as if at random. “We’ve also just received a video feed from the
crash site of the Jerry meteorite. We, uh, it was sent here late last night –
here it is.”

Sean
and Kevin drifted over to stand behind the couch as a still image of a couple
men in white protective suits and glass-faced helmets stood beside some trees
coated in a light layer of snow. John hopped over and slid a video tape into
the VCR below the TV and pushed the red “record” button.

A
distant voice, partially muffled by the protective helmet and speaking in
Russian, began as one of the men gestured behind him. A translator’s voice came
in a couple of moments later. “Here we are at the crash site, at approximately
sixty degrees north longitude, sixty-two and a half degrees west latitude,
six-hundred and forty-two kilometers north of Yekaterinburg. The meteorite has
come to rest here at the base of a hill after bouncing and scraping along the
landscape for roughly seventy kilometers.”

The
video cut to a shot of the two men’s backs as they approached a small hill a
few hundred yards away. The image bounced as the cameraman apparently trudged
through the snow and mud that rested between the low-lying brush and trees in
the area. As they neared the hill, a long shape at its base began to take form,
about a hundred and fifty meters across and thirty meters high. 

The
video cut again and the two men were now standing in front of a craggy, rock wall
facing the camera. “This is the base of the meteorite. As far as we have been
able to determine, it is largely intact with no pieces lying anywhere nearby.
Some of our other team members are currently investigating the initial
touch-down site and the meteorite’s trail. We should hear more from them by
this evening.”

“The
outer layer appears to be slightly porous and we are detecting strong iron
readings that seem to be rather evenly distributed throughout the meteorite. We
have as yet detected no abnormal radiation readings, but are still wearing
protective clothing as a precaution. Already one third of our crew has died. We
still have not been able to discover the cause.” 

The
image switched abruptly back to the newscaster who was still conferring with
someone off-screen to his left. He quickly turned back to the camera and
glanced nervously down at the sheet of paper in his hand. “That is all that we
have at the moment, we are hoping to receive more footage later in the day. Until
then, though, we will only be offering a minimal broadcast, featuring some
special reports on North Sea Whaling and foreign adoption procedures that were
taped last year. Thank you.”

John
leaned forward from his kneeling position on the floor, pressed the stop button
on the VCR, then pulled out the video cassette and set it on the shelf. Leaning
back on his haunches, he let out a low whistle and said, “Intact. Completely
intact. Man, I’d give anything to be there. Wouldn’t you, Dr. Prochazek?”

Kevin
nodded wordlessly. 

“The
Russians had a different name for the meteorite,” Alan Connors said tiredly as
he stared out the window. “They called it Ilya, or Elijah in English. ‘Jerry’
was probably just a little too American for them.
Ilya, or Saint Ilya, is
the prophet Elijah from the Bible. When Russia adopted Christianity a thousand
years ago or so, many of their old pagan gods didn’t die out. Rather, their
legends and attributes were just passed on and became attached to the new
saints and characters of the Bible. The Russians stopped worshipping Perun, the
god of thunder and lightning, and instead passed on his powers and
characteristics to Ilya, or Elijah, probably because Elijah rides a chariot of
fire up into heaven at the end of his life.”

“There’s
an old Russian legend,” continued Alan, “about how God called on Ilya to rid
the heavens of some pesky devils by attacking them with a terrible storm of
thunder, lightning and rain. Ilya sent the storm at them for forty days and
nights, creating so much rain that it washed all the devils away down to Earth.
That’s actually the explanation for where meteorites or shooting stars come
from – they’re just these little devils being swept out of heaven by Ilya’s
storm. Maybe that’s what this all is – God’s punishing us for our wicked ways
by sending Elijah and his fiery chariot full of little devils… I’d say he
overdid it.” 

Kevin
looked grimly at Alan. “We probably all need some rest. Let’s figure out some
sort of plan afterward. I don’t think any of us want to be stuck in here
forever.”